Little Wings Foundation Charity Ball, May 20 (Dubai)

I am supporting the Little Wings Foundation by attending their Charity Ball on May 20 at the Address Hotel Dubai Marina. The Ball includes dinner and drinks and helps to support medical treatment for three children (see below). Tickets sell for Protected content . If you would like to join in on a great cause and stylish Ball, you can contact Aileen, one of many volunteers directly, or get back to me.Regards Philipp

From: Protected content [mailto: Protected content

Sent: Tuesday, April 12, Protected content PM

Subject: FW: Little Wings Foundation Ball - May 20th

Dear all,

This is indeed a worthy cause and I thought that for those who are not familiar with the charity I would give you some more information.

The Little Wings Foundation was founded by a German orthopaedic surgeon with founding members coming from Ireland, Scotland, Portugal, Canada and Brazil . Some of us had been approached individually to aid patients seeking medical treatment who did not have the financial means to pay for it. What started almost 3 years ago around a dinning table as a will to help has now become a legally registered charity with the British Charity Commission. We are also legally affiliated with Oasis Hospital in Al Ain, where we carry out a lot of procedures. All of our financial accounts are externally audited and submitted to the British Charity Commission.

Our mission is three fold:To finance treatment for children with limb deformities To offer financial support for smaller individual projects To conduct education and awareness campaigns

We believe that every child, independent of race, religion or gender should have the same opportunity in life. To date we have treated over Protected content resident in the MENA region. We work with the Palestinian Childrens Relief Fund (PCRF) and have conducted six week long surgical missions to Palestine , cases that are deemed too complicated to be treated there are brought to Dubai, in some instances in co-ordination with the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding. We also sent a team of 3 surgeons, an Anaesthetist and 2 nurses to Haiti after the earthquake, due to the scale of that disaster.

Currently we are treating the following children:Four year Linethma lives in Dubai but is originally from Sri Lanka . Treatment started in Oct Protected content us for a congenital deformity of her right lower leg. She has a very rare and hard to treat condition which despite 6 surgeries has still not healed. We have now contacted the Limb Lengthening Center in Baltimore and are hoping they will accept her for treatment otherwise it is feared that she will need to have her leg amputated.Six year old Muhamad lives in Ajman but is originally from Pakistan . He has a congenital condition affecting his spine and both hands. After a consultation with a paediatric hand surgeon there is nothing surgically that can be done to improve his hands. His spine needed to be operated on in December so we sent him to the University of Basel in Switzerland for treatment using very specialised implants that aren't available in Dubai . These will allow his rib cage to grow without crushing his internal organs and his spine will slowly correct,w hile his lungs have room to grow. He will need two more surgeries this year to expand the implants further. Without these implants children with this condition die before they are teenagers as their lungs cannot increase in size. Ten year old Bahy is from Egypt . He has a congenital deformity in his leg and came to us for limb reconstruction and lengthening. So far we have lengthened his leg 8cm although it is still short. As he still has more growing to do he will need another lengthening surgery as a teenager.

All members of the foundation are volunteers but passionate about helping children with deformities. We are all very lucky and privieged but sadly there are those less fortunate in our community.